Popular production of space as a way of resistance: a report from the technical advisory

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the contributions of the Professional Practice Course in Advisory and Technical Assistance in Social Housing (CPPATHIS) in a process of resistance against the removal of residents from a community. CPPATHIS was a short course for newly graduated architects and planners, designed by Peabiru TCA in partnership with FAUUSP professors. With practical activities carried out in Jardim da União, an urban occupation in the south of the city of São Paulo (SP), the course sought to integrate theory and practice, composing a dialogical process among residents and advisors. For six months, real demands were worked on, ranging from more collective issues, such as the construction of community and infrastructure spaces, to more individual issues, such as the dimensions of housing improvements. In this process of struggle for permanence, the course's efforts came closer to the fights of other external agents, adding the use of an active methodology in the territory to the use of new technologies in area mapping. This strategy enabled the building of another narrative. In this sense, the Union Garden will be read as an emancipatory alternative to the capitalist production of urban space, in order to express that new ways of life are possible.